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Friday, August 9, 2013

Home Canning Grape Juice

Home Canned Grape Juice

Black seedless grapes were on sale this week for $.89 a pound and while filing through Pinterest I saw a picture of home canned grape juice that took me back to my Tennessee grandma's kitchen. She had a grapevine outback and she canned grape juice all summer long. I just had to have some. The method we used leaves the juice a little cloudy with some pulp in it. That is what I grew up drinking, I think it had to do with the grapes she used too. Anyway, I love it this way but if you want a more clear juice then you will want to pick up some cheese cloth and give it an extra strain. If you ever have trouble finding cheesecloth in your area, try and auto parts store. This is a little tip I picked up from my hubby. Cheese cloth is used when painting cars so they sell it at most Auto Zones.

Okay, so we started with about 10 pounds of grapes, washed and pulled from the stems. I boiled the grapes in three times as much water, we used filtered water, until they began to fall apart. Then I spooned the grapes into a strainer and squeezed out the excess juice. I threw out the pulp feeling very guilty thinking that is probably what my grandma used to make jelly but I don't know and I'm going to have to find out. Moving on, once the grapes were strained I strained the remaining juice and put it all back in the pot. To the large stockpot I added 3/4 cup Florida Crystals evaporated cane sugar. This is something you do to taste depending on the sweetness of the grapes. Start small you can always add more but you can't take it out. Once the sugar was added I cooked it on low for a few more minutes and funneled the juice into large canning jars. I processed my cans in a water bath for 10 minutes and presto, grape juice just like Nannies.

Home Canned Preserves

We also did a few jars of strawberry preserves this week, a few more cans of pears, tomato sauce, a few cans of salsa and we tried a homemade enchilada sauce recipe that I will be canning next week so watch for that. Finally, we worked on filling the freezer some more with pre-made twice baked potatoes. I use Pioneer Woman's recipe and then instead of baking the potatoes the second time I wrapped them individually and stored them in a freezer Ziploc. I am so excited about these because about two years ago we paid $10 for a four pack of these at Costco. They were so great to have in the freezer and now I have eight of them ready to go and I saved $20 on my freezer stock to boot!

PS. My little boy took the pictures for this post. Didn't he do a great job?

How I became Considering frugal

Fueled by the growing list of pollution related allergies my family suffered from each day, and inspired by my 97 year old grandmother who could recycle ANYTHING before recycling was cool, back in 2011, I decided (in the spirit of the Julie/Julia Project...) to embark on a journey to see just how much one family could do to change our planet. I didn't consult any other parties before I launched this idea. Thankfully my husband, daughter and son are usually my biggest supporters. Here is the catch; as I'm normally very thrifty (you can note from early blog posts), I was looking for ways that I could reduce our carbon footprint and make socially responsible purchases without increasing our spending. Mmmmmm. We succeed in changing some of our habits a bit and finding ways to reduce our footprint. There were lots of fun epic fails alone the way too! But the biggest change we have made over the course of the last six years, was to move from the mega city of Phoenix to Wyoming. You can read my full bio on my About Me page.

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